Training School

Training Schools are high performing schools recognised by the Department for Children, Schools and Families as providing exceptional school-based professional development for all their teaching and non-teaching staff, along with those in other schools in the area. They work closely with providers of Initial Teacher Training and lead the way on training and development for their local authorities.

Following the award of High Performing Specialist Status in 2008 Keswick School was awarded Training School Status in April 2009. The school believes in sharing innovative work with other members of the education community.

The areas in which we currently work include:

Continuing Professional Development of teaching and non-teaching staff at Keswick School:

at Keswick School we are strongly committed to developing our staff, both teaching and non-teaching. As a result we are developing personalised CPD pathways for all staff based closely on identified needs and linked strongly to both Performance Management targets and school and departmental development plans. We firmly believe that this, developed in collaboration with our partner schools, will ultimately improve teaching and learning.
 

Working collaboratively to support teaching and non-teaching staff at schools throughout Cumbria:

Keswick School has worked effectively in partnership with others in Cumbria and beyond, first as a Beacon School from 2000 and then as both a Science Specialist and Leading Edge school from 2003. We will use Training School status to expand this work in partnership and with the support of Cumbria LA and the new University of Cumbria. The school has a purpose built conference centre complete with excellent ICT facilities and a fully equipped science laboratory designed for this purpose.
Staff at Keswick School have supported a number of local secondary schools in teaching in a number of curriculum areas. We are currently coordinating a group of local science teachers from the Rural Academy schools of Cumbria in developing an online course to support the teaching of separate sciences at GCSE.
The range of courses on offer to all schools in the area will expand to include work with postgraduate certificate, postgraduate diploma and MA students in partnership with Cumbria University.  

Improving quality and increasing capacity in Initial Teacher Training:

in a rural area we feel it is essential to support ITT in order to develop our staff for the future. We have a strong relationship with Cumbria University for the support of ITT students and in recent years we have also worked with the Graduate Teacher Scheme, with the Open University and with Edge Hill, and have held taster days for several prospective students. We are also in demand to provide sixth form opportunities for ITT students in the area. A growing number of staff act as mentors to student teachers.

The Training School Administrator can be contacted by e-mail at :


trainingschool@keswick.cumbria.sch.uk
For further information on the Training Schools Programme
 www.tda.gov.uk

 

Tags: